Squaxin challenges county water code

David Windom, director of Mason County Community Services, describes the county’s new regulations related to water usage and development, at a public hearing, Tuesday, Feb. 20. The Squaxin Island Tribe testified concerns over the new regulations.(Photo: Arla Shephard Bull / Mason County Life)

Mason County approved permanent changes to its county code that will impact property owners who want to build new wells, but the Squaxin Island Tribe doesn’t believe the changes go far enough to protect surface water and fisheries.

The tribe is also challenging the county’s Comprehensive Plan before the Growth Management Hearings Board for the same reasons.

“The proposed amendments fail to include measures to protect surface water and fisheries in the rural area as the GMA requires,” stated Sharon Haensly, an attorney for the tribe, in a letter submitted to the county commissioners at a Feb. 20 public hearing.

Following the hearing, the Mason County Board of Commissioners voted to make permanent the interim changes that it had enacted earlier in the month as a reaction to the latest ruling from the state Legislature.

Senate Bill 6091, which passed in January, addressed the 2016 state Supreme Court decision, known as the Hirst ruling, that declared that counties could no longer rely on the Department of Ecology to determine whether enough water was available for new developments.

Following Hirst, counties had to make their own decisions about water adequacy in their areas for each new permit applicant who wanted to build a well.

Mason County’s new regulations mirror the new state law, and applicants face different rules depending on where they will build, as the regulations differ based on the Water Resource Inventory Area, or WRIA, they are in. WRIAs are how the state organizes its watersheds.

For builders in WRIAs 14, 15 and 22 — which represent the greater Shelton, North Mason and Matlock areas, respectively — applicants will pay a $500 one-time fee, $350 of which will go to Ecology to invest in projects that improve instream flows.

The remainder of the fee helps the county with administration costs.

In WRIAs 14 and 15, builders will be limited to a maximum average annual withdrawal of 950 gallons per day per connection, while builders in WRIA 22 will be able to withdraw a maximum average annual withdrawal of 3,000 gallons per day.

In a drought emergency, Ecology may curtail the withdrawal to no more than 350 gallons per day per connection for indoor use only.

Builders in WRIA 16, the greater Hoodsport and Lake Cushman area, will not be impacted by the new rules. Those builders can withdraw up to 5,000 gallons per day.

The state law also requires Ecology to work with stakeholders in WRIA 14 in Shelton to update its watershed management plan by June 2021 to identify the impacts of wells and ways to conserve and improve watershed health.

The county’s permanent changes differ from the interim changes in that an analysis of how instream flows might be impaired, and ways to mitigate the impairment, are no longer required for new groundwater withdrawal applications, in keeping with the state law.

The new county regulations fail to ensure that users won’t exceed their 950 or 350 gallon per day limits, and the regulations don’t include a method of enforcing those limits, stated the Squaxin Island Tribe in its list of concerns.

County commissioner Terri Drexler said that it is not the county’s responsibility to ensure that users are in compliance.

“I do not want this code to give any responsibility to the county to make sure you’re not using 951 gallons per day,” Drexler said. “It’s the tribe’s opinion that that’s our job, but I want to maintain that’s not our job.”

The Squaxin Island Tribe also stated that the county fails to apply limits to wells that are shared by two homes or to public wells that serve 15 connections or fewer.

The tribe takes issue with the fact that the new regulations were not submitted to the citizen planning advisory commission and do not include an environmental impact analysis.

“Additionally, it is unclear as to how the county will address applications for subdivision that propose to rely on permit-exempt wells,” Haensly stated.

The tribe’s concerns over the county amendments fall in line with a petition that the tribe submitted to the Growth Management Hearings Board on Feb. 15 that challenged Mason County’s Comprehensive Plan as adopted last December.

Haensly and Squaxin Island Tribe’s other attorney, Kevin Lyon, questioned whether the county comprehensive plan does enough to conserve fish and wildlife habitat or encourage the preservation of lands and sites with historical significance to the tribe.

“The enactments are inconsistent and/or fail to … ensure that patterns of land use and development are compatible with the use of the land for fish habitat … and/or to use best available science when developing policies and development regulations,” Haensly stated.

The Mason County Commission has tried to work together with the Squaxin Island Tribe, including developing a memorandum of understanding between the two agencies, said Mason County Commissioner Kevin Shutty.

“We’re reacting to legislation that was passed in Olympia to the best of our ability,” he said. “It’s what we have to do. We have a responsibility to the community … and we have to be mindful of the concerns of the tribe and … be good stewards of resources.”

To fulfill the tribe’s requests, the county would have to expend a lot of money in the form of water meters, meter readers and enforcement costs, commission chairman Randy Neatherlin said.

“That’s a giant ask,” he said. “We want to work with the tribe, but they have to be realistic.”

Drexler and Shutty noted that adopting the regulations doesn’t preclude the county from working to improve the health of the county’s watersheds.

“I think we can get there, where we’re adding more water in than we’re taking out,” Drexler said. “I believe we’re on a good track to take it further to move more water back to the aquifers.”

Photo by Arla Shephard Bull
David Windom, director of Mason County Community Services, describes the county’s new regulations related to water usage and development, at a public hearing, Tuesday, Feb. 20. The Squaxin Island Tribe testified concerns over the new regulations.